Your Top 11

Something a bit different today – some reader participation!

If you aren’t still stuck in the middle ages of Windows 2000 then you’ll be familiar with the ‘Start Panel’ – the new-style Start Menu introduced in Windows XP that, amongst other things, keeps a prominent list of which programs you use the most often.

It’s probably just me, but I find these lists to be a fascinating insight into user habits. I was amused to once find that the top three of a senior professor I know to be Internet Explorer, Word, and Solitaire (in that order, so he was at least working slightly more often than playing). So, here is today’s exercise: below are the Top 11 programs I use, as indicated by my Start Panel recently used programs list. Your task is simple: leave a comment listing your top 11 as it stands right now.

Don’t worry if there aren’t 11 by the way; the exact number differs between different versions of Windows, but on both my workstations there seem to be 11 when I include the pinned items for Email and Web browser.

My Top 11

Flock

Microsoft Office Outlook

Remote Desktop Connection

Notepad++

Microsoft Office Excel

Windows System Image Manager

Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer

VNC Viewer

Microsoft Virtual PC

Adobe Photoshop CS3

WinDbg

So what can we take away from this? Possibly that I work too hard (tragically, the lists on my home and work computers are very similar). Also, I’ve been doing a lot of SharePoint work recently, and have been getting new client images built, hence the appearance of Windows System Image Manager. Not all that exciting, but hopefully yours will be a bit more interesting!

This is unsurprising, as I do most of my work on my other laptop. And also because most of my work at home involves Googling stuff I don’t know …

I don’t actually use the personalised start menu, though. I much prefer to just look at a full list of programs if I’m looking, and the stuff I use frequently (Calculator, Notepad, Firefox, Windows Media Player, Paint) are in that spot usually reserved for Microsoft Update, and programs that like to push themselves on you.

Pretty obvious which machine is the internet machine there lol. I’m surprised though that Unreal Anthology doesn’t show up on the Desktop but Ballistics does…I’m pretty sure I haven’t played Ballistics since April???

I’ve noticed that the Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt can make an appearance often due to starting cmd using the Run command. I don’t know why it favours the VS shortcut over the regular cmd shortcut.

We don’t have the application history stuff by GPO because we rolled XP out with Classic Start Menu. So perhaps when we go to 7 in the Summer (licence purchasing and R&D willing), then I can provide an accurate answer..

I’d add to that Firefox and Notepad++; I load them at startup (or soon after) and they run I next shutdown (which is invariably after I get fed up with push “four hours/postpone”, somewhere around the second Friday of every month…